Physique digital camera video displaying a Larimer County Sheriff’s deputy tasing a person on Interstate 25 seconds earlier than he was hit by a passing SUV was launched Wednesday by attorneys for the person’s household and by the sheriff’s workplace.
The person, 28-year-old Brent Allen Thomspon of Loveland, died shortly after the incident at a hospital.
Final week, the Larimer County District Lawyer’s Workplace introduced that no prison expenses will probably be introduced in opposition to Deputy Lorenzo Lujan in connection to the Feb. 18 incident.
On Wednesday, attorneys Qusair Mohamedbhai and Siddhartha Rathod, who characterize the Thompson household, launched the video.
“Nobody of their proper thoughts would Tase somebody on the freeway,” Rathod mentioned in a cellphone interview Wednesday. “The general public has a proper to see this.”
Throughout a visitors cease on the freeway ramp, Thompson took off operating after Lujan advised him he was being arrested, as seen within the video. Lujan chased Thompson towards the freeway, firing his Taser after Thompson jumped a guard rail alongside the shoulder. Thompson collapsed on the freeway.
“Shit, shit,” Lujan says as a car comes down the freeway towards Thompson, operating him over.
Thompson may be heard moaning as Lujan handcuffs Thompson earlier than he drags him, face down, from the freeway lane to the highway’s shoulder. Lujan and different deputies on scene alternate performing CPR on Thompson till paramedics arrive. Thompson was taken to the Medical Heart of the Rockies, the place he was pronounced lifeless.
Larimer County Sheriff John Feyen launched an announcement, and physique digital camera video, on Wednesday afternoon.
“We prepare our deputies to maintain the group protected by taking decisive motion with the knowledge they’ve accessible within the second,” Feyen mentioned within the launch. “Nevertheless, this career doesn’t have the comfy luxurious of hindsight, and the powerful actuality is that unintended penalties can happen.”
Feyen, within the assertion, mentioned that he’s met with the Thompson household “and their representatives,” and that “first responders … grieve the lack of life in any state of affairs.
“No one needed this final result.”
In his extreme pressure determination letter launched final week, District Lawyer Gordon McLaughlin wrote that an investigation and evaluation of Colorado legislation discovered “there is no such thing as a cheap chance of success in proving unanimously and past an inexpensive doubt that Deputy Lorenzo Lujan is criminally culpable for his try to impact the arrest of Brent Thompson.”
On Wednesday, Rathod mentioned the choice to not convey prison expenses in opposition to Lujan demonstrates “as soon as once more that the police can’t and won’t police themselves.
“On the time that Brent ran from legislation enforcement, he was solely suspected of committing the crimes of driving with expired registration and giving a false identify to legislation enforcement. The tasering of a person in the midst of an interstate freeway at evening is prison and reprehensible conduct and has no place in legislation enforcement.”
Rathod described the incident as “negligent murder” and Lujan’s actions as “criminally negligent” and a “deviation from customary of care.”
A civil rights lawsuit will probably be filed by the top of the 12 months, Rathod mentioned.
“The Thompson household is left with no selection however to hunt justice from a civil jury,” Rathod mentioned.
The Larimer County Sheriff’s Workplace didn’t return a cellphone name searching for remark for this story.